WAKE-UP CALL

Seth Meyers Denounces Trump’s ‘War on the Free Press’

One week before Donald Trump’s inauguration, the ‘Late Night’ host dove into his open ‘hostility’ with the concept of a free media.

On Wednesday night, Seth Meyers spent some time going after BuzzFeed for releasing the unsubstantiated report about Donald Trump’s alleged penchant for “golden showers.” But on Thursday, he turned his attention back to the man who will be sworn in as president in just seven days.

From his “war on the free press” to his “sprawling and unprecedented conflicts of interest,” the Late Night host said this week has been a “wake-up call” for anyone who was holding out hope that Trump could change his ways after being elected.

Meyers zeroed in on Trump’s first press conference as president-elect, which he said had one central focus: “picking a fight” with the media. Despite what Trump told reporter Jim Acosta, the host clarified that CNN’s report on the Russia dossier “was not fake news,” adding, “Trump’s hostility towards the press is something you usually see in authoritarian regimes.”

But beyond Trump’s “I’m a germaphobe” defense, Meyers was more concerned with the “empty spectacle” that was the piles of prop folders beside his podium, which the president-elect used to prove that he was taking his conflict of interest issues seriously.

Of course, it appeared that the paper in the folders were blank. “Even if you were doing a middle school play, you’d write something on the folders to make it look real,” he said.

Meyers described Trump’s supposed solution to those conflicts as a “sham arrangement” in which he will not divest from his companies or put his holdings in a blind trust, instead deciding to hand everything over to “Kim Jong-Eric and Kim Jong-Donald.”

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Matt WilsteinSenior Editor

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